How to Succeed in How to Succeed

January had rolled around in the second year of what someone had dubbed the Soaring Sixties. With the East and West brandishing bombs, the big ones, I hoped it would not become the Searing Sixties. I was beginning '61 in a way I have cherished for years – sopping up the sun on my hilltop in Hollywood and generally taking it easy between night-club and hotel dates.

My dozing was interrupted by a phone call from Bill Josephy of the West Coast office of General Artists Corporation, a man I had known years ago when he was in the dress business. This call was to begin a chain of events leading to my role in the Broadway musical How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, a segment of my career running the gamut from supreme satisfaction to shattering discouragement.

"Cy Feuer is in town, Rudy," said Josephy, "and he's got a part for you in a musical. You know, Feuer and Martin."

"Oh, yes," I replied. "Can you tell me more about it?"

"Why don't you come on over to the hotel and let Cy fill you in. He's at the Beverly Hills."

There Feuer outlined the story briefly – the, by now, fairly well-known saga of the onward-and-upward progress of the guileful window-washer who becomes chairman of the board of World Wide Wickets. Like most show people pitching a production, Feuer laughed uproariously at frequent junctures which he felt would be the comedic highlights.

"You'll be J. B. Biggley, the president of the company," added Feuer.

I thought about it for a moment. "Can you give me your idea of what sort of a person this Biggley is to be? Visually – personality ––"

"He's you, Rudy. We thougth you'd be perfect."

"Yes, but – well, is the role sort of a Jim Backus, bluff and hearty? Or is it prissy, sort of Edward Everett Horton?"

"Frankly, I don't see him specifically, in detail, so to speak. That is not yet."

"Very well. Let me think it over."

About a week or so later Josephy called me again with further information. The rehearsals were to begin in May, I believe, with the show opening in July. This meant I would have to forgo playing Bermuda, something I looked forward to each June. Taking part in the show would mean moving to New York for the run and I did not relish leaving Silvertip for any length of time; I knew I would have to sign for a minimum of a year. Furthermore, as I reconsidered the part the way Feuer had sketched it out, Biggley sounded like a one-dimensional, unrelieved s.o.b. with little chance to ingratiate himself with the audience in any way.

"I'm sorry, Bill," I told Josephy. "I don't see the part as one for me at all."

A couple of weeks later Josephy called to see (continued on page 98) How to Succeed (Continued from Page 87) if I'd changed my mind, but I was still adamant. It didn't seem worth the headaches and I assumed that this was the end of it.

In March I was playing Orlando, Florida, and received a wire and a call from the New York GAC office. It seemed they still were interested in me for Succeed.

"We'd like it very much if you could arrange to come to New York and sing some of the numbers for us at the St. James Theater," said the GAC man. "Of course, we'll pay your fare here."

I did a slight burn. It was obvious that Frank Loesser wanted to hear me sing to be sure I'd be able to handle his music. Now this was understandable, really, but I figured it was pretty goddamn late in life for me to be running around auditioning for Loesser. "That's a long way to get back to California – via New York. It's really a pain in the neck and I'm not terribly enchanted about the part anyway. Tell you what," I countered. "Pay my fare to New York and on to California and I'll do it."

They refused, so I went on back home figuring that I was definitely not going to "Succeed."

The week of April 24 I was booked into a small hotel and supper club in London, Ontario, where I had played about nine months before at a good fee and where the audience reaction was always excellent. We were rehearsing Monday afternoon when I got a call from Marty Baum, an agent at GAC whom I had never met. I knew he had been involved previously with Baum and Newborn, a firm now a part of GAC. They had previously acted as my theatrical representation and had asked me to do a show with Eartha Kitt called Jolly's Progress. I told them it was a bad show, that my part stank and I believe it folded on Broadway after about a week. Evidently Abe had drawn the assignment to get me for the Loesser show.

"They're still interested in you for Succeed," he told me. "Can you swing down to New york after you finish in London and talk it over? They've postponed the May rehearsals. You can still play Bermuda."

"Oh, hell, Marty. It's impossible. I've got to get straight back to the Coast. They've scheduled a recording date for me." This was a black, barefaced lie. I wasn't playing hard to get, though; it was the only excuse I could think of to get out of coming to New York. I was homesick for my bride and my home in the Hollywood hills.

When I'm working in a hotel, I always leave no disturb instructions at the switchboard. No calls until two or three in the afternoon, since I often don't get to bed until three or four in the morning. Nevertheless, the following Thursday the phone rang at 11 A.M.

"Is the goddamn building on fire?" I grumbled into the mouthpiece.

"It's me – Abe Newborn," came the answer.

"Where in the hell are you calling from?" I'd never met him.

"Downstairs in the lobby. Cy Feuer is with me. Boy, what a trip – we flew commercial to Toronto and then had to rent a private plane to get here. Would you believe it – the pilot was 16 years old. I swear to God! We've got Act I with us. Will you read it?"

"Of course I'll read it!" I exclaimed. I was impressed at their safari with the 16-year-old aviator.

I met them for a bit of breakfast, picked up Act I and went off alone to read it. Now, I've got a pretty fair reputation for picking tunes which become hits, artist who become stars. Therefore, you've got to believe this is not Monday-morning quarterbacking – when I read Act I, I was bowled over. It was, I felt, a palpable hit. Never in my life had I put a dime in a show, but I began reaching for my wallet then and there. The delightful story idea seemed to be permeated with the sweet smell of success.

I told Cy and Abe to count me in and, after the former excused himself, I taked to Newborn about such details as salary, dressing room and "house seats" (tickets set aside for an actor at each performance which he may buy at box-office prices on his own option). The pair then returned to New York and I to California.

In May I worked my way East again playing clubs and rooms, pointing to Bermuda in June and the beginning of rehearsals in August. Before taking off for Bermuda I signned the show contract for a year through GAC and met with Loesser, Feuer, Martin and the choreographer Hugh Lambert backstage at the Lunt-Fontanne Theater. We decided upon the keys for the songs I would do in the production and Loesser gave me a recording he had made of his own versions of the tunes.I was to take it to Bermuda and bone up.

On August 4 we began the tedious grind of rehearsals in a studio designed for such things, as depressing a milieu as could be imagined, certainly not surroundings conducive to eliciting the best from a performer. For some goddamn reason this is theatrical tradition – there is a strange rationale in the theater (and I don't suppose they will ever change) that a production must begin in some scruffy loft, some moth-eaten ballroom in a third-rate hotel, or a barren, colorless rehearsal hall in the Broadway area. I can only assume that this choice of arena has to do with budget considerations. At any rate, there is always the atmosphere of a cut-rate funeral home.

At the outset of our first gathering, Abe Burrows, the director and one of those responsible for the show's book, enlightened us on how gifted he was a writer, director and utility godhead. Further, he informed us in a warm and most encouraging way that some of us present would not be with the show in a few weeks. Then with jape and quip and quotes from George S. Kaufman he sketched out the various duties at hand pursuant to mounting the show. We waded through the first reading (just the lines, no songs) and then dispersed into different rooms by groups to work on various parts of the routining.

As I watched these segments being polished, it became obvious to me that here was a production which could well become a veritable gold mine. Before I had gone to Bermuda prior to the rehearsals, the publicity boys had told me they already had $500,000 in the till from advance ticket sales.

"All kidding aside, Ruddy," they told me, "half of that advance is because you're in the show. People order tickets for the 'Vallee Show.' Maybe they can't remember the title, it's so long."

I had made a few casusal feelers toward investment in the show with Ernie Martin, but had gotten only evasive answers. On August 14 I stopped beating around the bush.

"With or without me," I told Martin, "you've got a smash hit. It's a combination of My Fair Lady, Guys and Dolls and Of Thee I Sing. Not a bad parlay at all! Ernie, I'd like to put some money in it."

Martin is always grinding away on a piece of gum. He just glared at me and gnawed the gum. "No," he said, "I don't want any of our personalities investing in the show." Three days later I was to realize why he was so evasive.

The next day the New York Daily Mirror columnist, Bill Slocum, came by to do a story on this epic now in rehearsal. It was a flattering column and stated in part: "Mr. Vallee thrilled me with an expert sense of timing, a gift I never suspected he had." (So I couldn't have been all bad.)

There are always annoyance in any theatrical undertaking. Some are sizable, some petty. One thing that galled me was the paltry rehearsal salary – five weeks at $87.50 a week; everyone in the cast got this from the lowliest "walk-on" to the stars. Now this is commendably democratic, but since I was paying $150 per week for my apartment (most of the others in New York), I was at a disadvantage. I had asked Newborn months before what the rehearsal fee would probably be. "Oh, I don't know exactly. It's just (Continued on page 210) How to succeed (continued from page 98) a token salary – probably a couple of hundred," he had said vaguely. This sounded reasonable, since I had received one hundred a week with George White's Scandals 30 years before.

When I learned about the $87.50 I smoldered awhile and then on August 16 wrote Newborn to try to get $150 weekly to at least defray the cost of the apartment. It seemed only fair for the producers to cover some of my out-of-pocket expenses. If the show folded quickly, I would wind up way in the red on the venture.

Next day, August 17, during a rehearsal break, Abe Newborn suggested we duck out for some refreshments. I assumed he had gotten my letter about salary and wanted to discuss it.

We settled down at a table in the Hotel Edison Green Room and Newborn let me have it.

"They want you out of the show," he said evenly.

If he had suddenly hit me in the face with a wet towel or his fist I could not have been more surprised. Of course, I thought that I had misunderstood him.

"That's it, Rudy," he repeated. "They want you out."

"Well, if that isn't a crock," I thought to myself. "But why – I haven't made a pass at any of the producers' wives. I haven't tried to rape a chorus girl or set fire to the theater."

Newborn continued. "They don't think you're right for the part. You are not projecting."

"Well, I'll be a son of a bitch!" I exploded. "I have been begging Burrows and the producers to give me some indication as to how the part should be played. All they say is the character should be virile. Virile! Goddamnit, a director is supposed to direct and Burrows has been wishy-washy in telling me exactly what he wants in J. B. Biggley. I don't think they know what in hell they want in Biggley."

"Don't feel too bad," Abe said. "Remember, Rudy, we have a pay-or-play contract. Now, technically, they will have to pay you full salary by contract for 57 weeks. It comes to about 80, 90 thousand. They told me they'd settle with you, free and clear, for 40 thousand. If you demand the full payment you can't work at anything for 57 weeks."

"Nuts! I want the full 57 weeks! I'll take it and sit on my ass. The hell with them."

Most performers gladly take a settlement because it permits them to continue working at other things. And, too, if the show folds in a few weeks or months they are still way ahead of the salary they would have gotten. But I knew this one was going to be a hit and I wanted to be in it.

"Tell you what you do, Abe," I suggested. "Go back to the boys and ask them if I can continue for two or three days. Maybe we can remedy whatever seems to be wrong."

Newborn returned shortly with the reply. "If they give you the extra days and you still don't suit them, there'll be no 57 weeks' pay. That's the deal."

"If that's the way they feel, the hell with it. I'll leave, but they're going to pay off in full. Why should I suffer the humiliation of getting fired and have them pay off at half-price?"

"That's what Ernie Martin has in mind," Newborn said. "He says when he makes a bad bargain, he pays off. It's as if he were at the race track."

I wasn't going to give up that easily. My pride was cut to the quick. I don't take this type of thing lying down. I went back to see Burrows and Feuer at the rehearsal hall to find out exactly what their objections were.

"Frankly, Rudy, we're afraid you won't be heard," Burrows explained. "The 46th Street Theater seats about 1500 people and we don't think your voice will carry."

"That's nonsense! For years I worked to an audience of 5000 at the Paramount!"

"But this is quite different from a stage show. It's a different type of production altogether."

There was no use arguing the point, even though many of the things I had done at the Paramount were quite comparable to this script. Moreover, both Feuer and Burrows knew of special microphones used by performers in Broadway productions when further amplification of the voice was necessary. And there'd be microphones in the footlights for everyone!

"Do me one favor," I said. "Let's go over to the Lunt-Fontanne Theater and let me read a few lines with one of the cast. I want to prove something to you."

So Feuer, Burrows and I took Virginia Martin, the girl who plays my red-haired inamorata in the show, and proceeded to the Lunt-Fontanne, which, incidentally, is owned by Messrs. Feuer and Martin. I read one of the scenes and Feuer came up from the auditorium and said that he thought I would be all right.

Not so Burrows. He kept reminding me of the pressures and difficulties of the out-of-town tryout in Philadelphia; he felt I might not be able to take the physical punishment. Whence came this sudden great compassion for my feebleness, decrepitude and senility I can never fathom; nevertheless, he seemed certain I would never be able to make it. The matter of my continued employment was left up in the air and I was told to go home. They would give me their decision the following noon.

While we were reading the lines, I did not notice a figure seated in the very last row of the theater. I learned about this much, much later. It was Abe Newborn giving my performance and vocal projection the acid test by listening from the farthest reach of the house. After I left, he bent the boys' ears until 8:30 that evening, and finally convinced them that I should stay. But Feuer admits that the prospect of having to pay me 80, 90 thousand dollars was the clincher that finally kept me in.

The next day at noon the phone rang. It was Newborn. "They've decided to let you stay," he said. "Perhaps this happens for the best."

This last remark infuriated me somehow. How could an insult, a cut, a humiliation like this be for the best? Of course, from then on it was a wonder I could do the goddamn part at all.

I reported for rehearsal as if nothing had happened, with one slight but important difference. As I have said, from the time Cy Feuer had first sketched the plot line for me that day in California, I had been begging for direction as to how the character of Biggley should be portrayed. On this particular rehearsal day I substituted a pince-nez for the regular "templed" glasses I had been wearing for the part. I "played" to the pince-nez, I guess ... and it is quite possible that the substitution contributed a little something toward the characterization for those jerks who couldn't visualize it otherwise.

Speaking of this pince-nez, I had planned a bit of business with it. In the Heart of Gold number in Succeed, the redhead hits a high note that rattles the woodwork. It is really overpowering and overpoweringly funny as well. I was going to rig a thread to the pince-nez and when she hit this note I would have the glasses pop right off my nose.

During one of the last rehearsals in Philly, Bob Fosse, who was staging the musical numbers, had an idea. "Rudy, when she hits that note can you fix it so your glasses fall off?"

"You son of a bitch," I laughed. "I was saving that as a surprise for opening night!"

At any rate, the bit is in the show now and never fails to bring down the house.

The night before we were to leave for the Philly tryout run late in August, we had our first complete run-through – no stopping, no coaching, no whistles (Fosse always blows a goddamn whistle to stop a number for corrections), with just a piano in the pit, no makeup or scenery, and no amplifications of our voices at all before a small, invited audience. I romped through my role just as I had done it all through the rehearsal grind.

In the first act I have several moments offstage and, as I sat there in the dark, several singers and dancers approached me saying, "You are wonderful – great!" It was the manna of vindication.

Once during a rehearsal, Larry Kasha, who is Feuer and Martin's casting director, had quietly remarked to me, rather cryptically, "I want you to be good. I have a great stake in this thing." I couldn't understand what the hell he meant. I later learned he had originally suggested me for the part of Biggley. He must have been rather apprehensive the last few strife-torn days, to say the least. At intermission that night of the first run-through, he passed by me, saying, "I love you!"

Some of those who had wanted to crucify me a few short days before were most effusive in their praise. Abe Burrows, with whom I had done about a hundred radio shows years before, approached me after the performance, saying, most solicitously, "May I help you out to your cab – take care of yourself – drive carefully down to Philadelphia ––"

• • •

I have since learned that firings like this are common. But usually the victim is a newcomer. I had Frank Loesser problems from the outset. A few days before the New York rehearsals began he phoned me to drop by his office to go over the tunes. His half-humorous parting words were, "I am going to put you on the rack."

This annoyed me faintly and I immediately called Abe Burrows whom I felt I knew well enough to use as a confidant. "Now look here, Abe," I said. "If I am going to have a lot of headaches with Loesser about my singing I'd rather bow out right now. Who needs that crap? I'd much prefer to get the hell back to California."

"Now, now, Rudy," Abe replied. "Just calm down. It'll be all right."

That first day Loesser's office became a conservatory of music with him acting as voice professor.

"Rudy, you're singing incorrectly," he said. "You're closing on your consonants."

"Maybe you're right, Frank," I said. "Fortunately. I've managed to squeak by with this handicap for about 33 years. I guess it's a little late in life to acquire a new technique." I had been wined and dined by composers as great or greater than Loesser to persuade me to introduce their tunes.

He gave me discs on which he had recorded the three songs I was to do in Succeed. I took them to Bermuda for study. Two of the songs, Grand Old Ivy and Heart of Gold, were what Tin-pan Alley would call corny – they verged on the old-fashioned Gay Nineties style in both melody and lyrics. As a college marching song, Old Ivy never would have taken any prizes, but because of my association with the Maine Stein Song, the former opus acquires a certain nostalgic cachet when performed in the show. Heart of Gold has an old-time quality reminiscent of A Bird in a Oilded Cage or You Made Me What I Am Today, I Hope You're Satisfied, but the way Virginia Martin and I do it on the stage gives it, in my opinion, a plus not inherent in the number itself. In fact, most song pluggers I know would characterize both songs as dogs. The third number, A Secretary Is Not a Toy, I thought was very bad – quite rangy and not very tuneful although the lyric was extremely witty.

Three days before the firing I was ordered into Loesser's small office off the rehearsal hall next to the Edison Hotel where the maestro again instructed me on the proper interpretation of the songs. The fact that I had chosen thousands of songs over a period of three decades and given them a style that was studied by Sinatra and others, meant nothing to Loesser.

As we discussed the rendition of the numbers I began to realize that Loesser regarded them as true works of art and, as befits masterpieces, proper performances could only come from considerable rehearsal on my part. If there is one thing that heats up my blood it is when someone tries to make a big thing out of nothing. And here is where the composer's feathers got ruffled.

"Frank, don't you realize that these are extremely simple songs?" I said politely and candidly. "I can do them about as well the first time as I can the thousandth."

"Understand one thing," he replied. "I've got a great deal of money in this show. I don't intend to have it ruined by your not performing the songs properly."

I should have realized that the dictates of a director-producer-songwriter in the legitimate and motion-picture fields are rarely questioned or contradicted. Loesser probably had never had anyone speak as frankly and critically about his songs as I had. So he was boiling.

He was not the only one building up a head of steam – I felt I was being sold short on the tunes given me as I listened to those given the other members of the cast. It seemed to me every other number in the show consisted of melodies a singer dreams of having, they were so desirable, while the tunes I was assigned I would never even have programed on one of my broadcasts.

At any rate, after I had gone through Heart of Gold several times with Miss Martin, I felt I was singing it as well as I ever could, and I said so. I suppose Loesser expected me to stay in the stuffy little rehearsal room doing the song over and over the way the boys and girls in the cast had to do with their material. It is quite possible that my frank and practical attitude rankled Loesser.

On the evening of August 16, the night before the firing, just before we were dismissed from rehearsal, Abe Burrows began to criticize me quite angrily, particularly about my love scenes with Miss Martin. No indication had been given me in the script and for the previous eight or nine days I had been reading the amorous lines quite straight with all the sincerity at my command. Burrows was not able to put into words exactly what he wanted, but I gathered he was seeking more of a tongue-in-cheek flavor.

There were only Burrows, his secretary and, I believe, Miss Martin in the room when Abe suddenly jumped on me about my theatrics. I thought I had known him long enough (since the 1940 Sealtest days) to voice an honest difference of opinion in something I had to do in the show. I realize now that he was quite possibly angered at my refusal to accept abjectly his direction. I had torn it with another of the bosses.

The following morning, August 17, bloomed clear and hot and I guess I should have sensed that something was in the air. Bob Fosse had just been brought into the show, being touted to us as a magician with his choreography and the staging of songs. When I was ordered into Room 2 to find the entire group of big brass seated there like Supreme Court judges to watch me go into a rendition of Secretary, I knew that something was up.

This number was originally intended for Paul Reed who has a strong, trained voice (the type of voice used in musical comedies to sing things like Stout-Hearted Men), a voice that indicated he had hair on his chest. Actually, I had never felt that Secretary needed delivery by a trained voice, as it was a sexy lyric and a trite melody best suited to a natural-voice singer such as I am. Fosse had devised some movements for me as I sang the number with all the male singers in back of me. We were ordered to go through it two or three times and I did it as well as I can do that type of number, giving it all the animation and voice I could muster. Perhaps I should have been aware that they were not pleased with my rendition, but I frankly felt that I did a good job of it and was not looking for any on-the-table criticism of my method of delivery. Evidently it was the straw that broke the camel's back, because a few minutes later the agent, Abe Newborn, walked in and asked me to go down to the Edison, where he gave me the bad news.

One of the cast later on explained to me that probably the reason I was asked to leave was that all of our brass were running scared. Remember if you will (something that I did not know at the time) that Feuer and Martin had had a $400,000 flop in a show which they had written together, Feuer had directed and I understand it was a very miserable production called Whoop-up. I'd assumed that they'd had nothing but successive hits and I did not know that their last show had been a complete bust. Loesser had just had a very bad flop in a show called Greenwillow in which he'd attempted to have Anthony Perkins sing songs I understand were too much for him to handle. That was at least a $200,000 loss for Loesser. Abe Burrows had had an expensive disaster in First Impressions which he had written and directed. Another show, The Golden Fleecing, was a very so-so production. Fosse had been thrown out of a musical which had also collapsed to the tune of $500,000. The fact that they were all running scared still did not justify in my mind their making me the whipping boy. In rehearsal I was doing my lines in the same manner that I am doing them today – but men's egos bruise easily and it is my honest belief that my standing up to Loesser and Burrows was a signal for the lynching. Burrows, at least, was honest enough to say, "All right. We were stupid. So let's forget about it."

• • •

At any rate, we left New York for the tryout in the City of Brotherly Love. I survived the hours and hours of rehearsal where they wasted even more time than they had in that lousy New York rehearsal hall, with endless changes and changes of changes. No matter. On opening night with microphones in the footlights for everyone, the applause for all of us rocked the theater and my strong suspicions that a hit was brewing were thunderously confirmed.

The rest is theatrical history – we came to Broadway and became the "hardest-ticket" attraction since My Fair Lady. The critics unanimously saluted the production and I must blushingly admit that my own notices were flattering. The New York reviewers apparently didn't agree with the boys running the show. I sometimes imagine a little tableau that goes as follows:

A well-wisher approaches one of the Succeed brass and burbles, "What a stroke of brilliant offbeat casting – how on earth did you ever think of Rudy Vallee for the part?"

The brass assumes an all-knowing look of genius, thoughtfully taps the tips of his fingers together, and modestly says, "Well, you know, an awful lot of thought and care go into a major production – –"

End of tableau.

The most unhappy aspect of this whole undertaking is the fact that I was denied the opportunity to invest in Succeed. It would have been the first time in my life to make some easy money. I have made a lot of money in my time, but it was always very soggy with blood, sweat and tears. The fact that Ernie Martin refused my offer of money to back the show (probably because he was thinking of firing me – why do Vallee any favors?) has cost me the privilege of capitalizing on my inherent sense of what will be successful!

It is ironic to note that the much-contested tidbit, A Secretary Is Not a Toy, was no longer my number when the show came to Broadway. After all the furor it had caused! When I would do it in rehearsal, I would take slight liberties with the beat in certain places and this distressed Loesser immensely. He wanted it done in strict three-quarter time, hitting every note over the head. As the pressures mounted concerning my performance, I said to my wife, "If he'd only let me do it lightly and brightly, I think the bad melody would be less noticeable. It will seem more cute and clever. That's the way I think it should be done for best effect."

After several attempts to have other members of the cast have a go at it, Secretary was eliminated altogether.

Suddenly it reappeared in the show one day in Philadelphia, this time as a song-and-dance number with the boys and girls popping in and out of doors, moving swiftly about the stage, into and out of the wings – lightly and brightly so the melody is hardly noticeable. In such a guise the number always gets a fair hand.

Once in a while Old Man Vallee does call a shot!